Always try to rub up against money, for if you rub up against money long enough, some of it may rub off on you.

Runyon’s line is a sardonic, streetwise take on social mobility: wealth is imagined as something transferable by proximity rather than merit. “Rub up against money” suggests cultivating the company of the rich, frequenting places where cash circulates, or attaching oneself to profitable schemes—an attitude associated with hustlers and opportunists in Runyon’s fictional New York. The joke depends on a physical metaphor (“rub off”) that turns aspiration into a kind of contamination or residue, implying that money attracts money and that access, networks, and environment can matter as much as talent. It can be read both as cynical advice and as a critique of a society where wealth reproduces itself through closeness and connection.